Old Unsingable

Since you’re probably sitting down as you read this, at this time would you please stand, remove your hat, tuck in your shirt, take that piece of spinach out from between your teeth, put your right hand over your heart (left side), and join us in casting a cartoonist’s jaundiced eye toward our beloved but bedeviling national anthem.

Now, regardless of your feeling about her rendition at the Inauguration, I don’t think anyone would ever accuse the callipygian Beyoncé of that crime.

Still, the Beyoncé brouhaha, not to mention the keen attention paid to Super Bowl national-anthem performances after the rapture that greeted Whitney Houston, in 1991,

is sure to focus all eyes and ears on this Sunday’s performance, by Alicia Keys. I’m betting that she will be in synch with the music, but that’s where the synching will stop. And whatever she does, I don’t think it will satisfy traditionalists. Keys has already given warning: “I’m gonna do it in a way that only I can do.”

Gee, if she feels that way, maybe she should sing “My Way” instead. Now that’s a good song—catchy lyrics and singable—whereas our national anthem might as well be called “Old Unsingable.” The tune comes from an eighteenth-century men’s social club, the Anacreontic Society, which celebrated love and wine, as does their eponymous song.

With a range of one and a half octaves, the melody is notoriously difficult to sing. But I guess that didn’t matter to the old Anacreons, maybe because they were too drunk to care. Perhaps, in that spirit, Ms. Keys should partake of some spirits and have a few belts before belting it out. Maybe we all should, because, as anyone who has attended a major sporting event knows, “Old Unsingable” mixes quite well with alcohol.

saw Old Glory gallantly streaming o’er Fort McHenry, and mashed up the melody with his poem “Defence of Fort McHenry,” of which, fortunately, only the first stanza is sung, because, for example, here’s the third stanza:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution! No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Look, I’m as patriotic as the next guy, or, if not him, the guy next to him, or certainly someone he knows, or someone Kevin Bacon was in a movie with. The point is, I’m certainly not a traitor, so I’m O.K. with having a national anthem—just not this one.

Blame for not having a better alternative should be placed squarely where all blame seems to go these days: on Congress. In 1931, an act thereof made it our official delay-of-game number, passing over the perfectly tuneful, singable, and non-jingoistic “America the Beautiful.” Two years later, Congress, perhaps realizing that the newly anointed song could be better appreciated somewhat anesthetized, and in honor of its provenance, repealed Prohibition. I’m sure the old Anacreons would have toasted to that.

But maybe the land of the free and the home of the brave shouldn’t have a compulsory national anthem. Imagine, for a moment, the slippery slope if Congress mandated live renditions of the national anthem for all gatherings, public or private…

Where would it stop? A mandatory national anthem for gatherings of one or more? Oh, say, can you see the possible implications? Or, at least, the possible humorous ones?